Which invention of the third millennium is most important to you?

[jobbautista9]

Btw if git can be considered an invention (it was developed in 2005), then I'd say git, as well as GitHub (before its ultimate acquisition by Microsoft). They made free and open-source development easier for everyone. Its branching system is really great.

[Moonchild]

They made free and open-source development easier for everyone. Its branching system is really great.

Totally agree! But a branching version control system wasn't invented by git; it just made it a lot more accessible to use

[athenian200]

Actually, as a matter of fact, as part of learning more about Sun's history, I know about at least two earlier distributed version control systems.

BitKeeper was used by the Linux kernel before Git was developed. It was technically released in early 2000, and unsurprisingly Git takes a lot of inspiration from it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper

And even before BitKeeper, Sun themselves had a proprietary version control system they used for their largest codebases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_WorkShop_TeamWare

Which is what inspired the developer of BitKeeper. So really, the core idea behind Git was essentially already in place in at least one major software company, and I wouldn't be surprised if other large companies had software like that for internal use only.

Now, to Git's credit, I would agree that it is the first good, open-source distributed version control system. GNU Arch and others were not good enough to convince people to use them over basic CVS or proprietary solutions until Git was created.

[Greywool]

Again, as a concept it's not from this century, but personally, the ease of availability of portable music/audio. Had tape walkmans in the 80s, which offered a whopping 90 minutes of unique audio on a good day, portable cd players in the 90s which offered almost 10 seconds of audio without skipping.

But it was improved enough in the mid 2000s for me to consider 'em a new invention. I still have an iriver H340 running from 2004, powered by Rockbox. Also a newer even tinier Walkman, both offering hundreds if not thousands of hours of audio without needing to carry a pile of insertable media, with battery life extending to triple digit hours.

Also the concept of this topic is kind of... misleading? Are only fully unique inventions accepted? Most of the inventions from the previous century can also attribute some of their aspects to inventions decades if not centuries before them. Like, would a car be applicable for a relatively recent invention because it relies on the wheel which was invented quite a while back?

[Moonchild]

Also the concept of this topic is kind of... misleading? Are only fully unique inventions accepted? Most of the inventions from the previous century can also attribute some of their aspects to inventions decades if not centuries before them. Like, would a car be applicable for a relatively recent invention because it relies on the wheel which was invented quite a while back?

I think the OP meant to consider inventions that are actually bringing something new to the table. even if a wheel and cart was nothing new, an automobile was. Take that forward, even if a cassette wasn't new, and music wasn't new, and a battery and headphone wasn't new, the concept of a walkman was, coming with its own unique challenges. Even if a phone was nothing new, a mobile phone was -- each of these require new and original ways of creating something to serve a purpose; and that's the thing that seems to have been lacking lately. An improvement on something isn't a new invention in most cases. An automobile isn't an "improved horse and cart" or an "improved wheel" since it's essentially different in its makeup.
While I agree that in some cases the boundary can be a bit fuzzy, in most cases it isn't.